Fired Up For Christmas ...

“My favorite color is Christmas lights.”

The Cetronia Volunteer Fire Department is festooned and “fired up” for Christmas as Christmas lights frame the building with the holiday spirit in the Borough of Cetronia, Allentown, Pennsylvania on a mid-December evening.

Cetronia Volunteer Fire Department is located at 3950 Broadway, Allentown. It operates 1 Engine Company, 1 Rescue Engine, 1 Ladder Tower, and 1 Utility. It responds to about 700 calls a year ranging from vehicle accidents to working dwelling fires. Currently, the firehouse has about 25-30 active volunteers dedicating time not only to running calls, but training, fire prevention, and house work. The department meets every Monday night at 6 p.m. for its weekly drill. Stop by anytime the doors are open for a tour or an application.

The department’s 2019 Santa Run will take place December 21. Starting with a departure from the firehouse at 10 a.m., Santa will be escorted around the department’s first-due area by its fleet of fire trucks and its members.

The Barn At Jacobsburg ...

“How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose if there were no winter in our year!”

           ~ Thomas Wentworth Higginson

                    ~1823-1911

               ~ from “April Days”

                          ~ 1861

A barn nestled in mid-March snow paints a picturesque late winter scene in Henry’s Woods at Jacobsburg State Park, which spans between Wind Gap and Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

The barn is part of Boulton, an early American industrial community in the heart of the Jacobsburg National Historic District – once the site where the famous Henry Rifle was made – which lies almost entirely in the park. Henry’s Woods offers very scenic hikes and the rest of the center grounds have multi-use trails.

The barn was built by William Henry III circa 1821 to house grain and livestock.

Jacobsburg State Park offers environmental education programs from the preschool environmental awareness programs to high school level environmental problem solving programs, historical programs, teacher workshops and public interpretive programs.

The park surrounds the Bushkill Creek.

The original land for the center was purchased by the Department of Forests and Waters from the City of Easton in 1959. In 1969, additional land was purchased using funds from Project 70. This brought the total land area of the center to its present size of 1,168 acres.

For more information on the Henry family visit the Jacobsburg Historical Society’s website at http://www.jacobsburghistory.com/.

Art In The Alley ...

“Feeling is what I like in art, not craftiness and the hiding of feelings.”

                      ~ Jack Kerouac

                         ~1922-1969

An infrared view of Bank Street, just off Northampton Street in downtown Easton, Pennsylvania as evening looms on a late November afternoon.

Bank Street is the site of “Artists in the Alley,” a tented arts and crafts event, held every Saturday from May through November from 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m.

The sign for “Just Around The Corner Fine Art & Fine Craft Gallery” can be seen at right.